Pelosi weighs in on war funding

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent out a vaguely cool and very carefully worded message on President Obama’s $83.4 billion war supplemental (see below)for Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s a difficult issue for the Speaker, who fiercely opposed former President Bush’s invasion of Iraq, but now must provide funding to a Democratic White House whose escalation of the Afghanistan war could place as many as 70,000 U.S. troops there this fall.

There have been rumblings among Democrats and others that the White House, like its predecessor, does not have a clear exit plan.

“The first priority of Congress and the president is to protect the American people and to provide our men and women in harm’s way with all the resources they need,” Pelosi’s statement said. “The president has presented a clear plan to end the war in Iraq and to defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan. In the coming weeks, Congress will carefully review the president’s request and will engage in a dialogue with the Administration on appropriate benchmarks to measure the success of our investments.”